An erroneous court order issued in relation to a child killed in a car crash led to a weekly newspaper rewriting its splash twice on deadline day.
The Section 39 order was issued by magistrates on Monday after 10-year-old Samuel Crocker died following the hit and run incident in the town of Crediton on Saturday.
It meant the Mid Devon Gazette had to rewrite its splash to remove any mention of Samuel or his school, anonymise the quotes from his headteacher and remove the picture of him which had been supplied by his relatives.
However the paper successfully overturned the ruling two hours before it went it to press, enabling it to publish a poster front page in memory of Samuel in Tuesday’s edition.
The order was initially made on Monday morning when Exeter Magistrates Court heard the case of Cameron Trivett, who is accused of causing Samuel’s death by careless or inconsiderate driving and failing to stop at the scene of an accident.
It was issued despite public tributes appearing on the websites of Samuel’s school and of Devon & Cornwall Police, as well as a number of stories which had named him on the Gazette’s website prior to the hearing.
The Bishop of Crediton had also spoken publicly about the tragedy at a memorial service attended by hundreds of people.
After taking advice from Tony Jaffa, of Foot Anstey solicitors, on the issue, editor Patrick Phelvin decided to abide by the order until the court was reconvened to hear an appeal.
Said Patrick: “We were faced with the absurd situation where we had to rewrite the story to remove any mention of Samuel or his school, anonymise the quotes from his head and remove the portrait picture of him which had been supplied by his relatives.
“Fortunately the clerks were able to get all parties back into Exeter Magistrates Court and, after some argument, the order was revoked.
“This just goes to show that there are perhaps well meaning but poorly informed court clerks and magistrates out there and reporters need to be ready to criticise and perhaps challenge their decisions.”
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It would be interesting to hear from Tony Jaffa, or someone else, if there would have been any legal consequences of just ignoring the incorrect order and publishing. I’m not advocating that as a policy, clearly Tony’s advice was to abide by it and then challenge, just wondering what if…..
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Could it be a splash if everything was anonymised with no pictures?
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Hi Idle Rich. I was quite up for ignoring the order but Tony advised that there was a precedent where a paper did this and a court found against them. Apparently the rule is the court has to revoke an S39, however daft, and breaching it remains a serious offence. Dave, yes we would still have splashed on the story but the report would have been lacking given that the boy’s identity was widely known and his family expected to see the picture they had supplied to the media.
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the bigger worry here is the Magistrate not knowing the law. Why would you need to protect the identity of someone who is dead?
Hope they are sent for training
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It is absurd that the order was given in the first place. If the magistrate had looked on Facebook, Twitter or any local news websites they would have seen that all family and police statements and photographs were already in the public domain.
To have restricted the reporting in newsprint would have been detrimental to what is known as ‘The Freedom of the Press’ and bias against print, surely there would have been a case to answer there?
A case of ‘Shutting the stable door…’?
The whole reporting of this terrible incident has been sensitively handled by all, including on social media. Well done all concerned!
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I am with Tony on this one – hard as it is for editors when they know a court order is plain barmy. At the end of the day IT IS a court order and if you defy it you run the risk of being in breach. Then you are in the hands of ‘reasonable ‘ magistrates and the old saying of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people applies. There is enough guidance out there for magistrates and clerks so this sort of case should not crop up as often as it does.
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For the benefit of thickos like me, was the order removed because the cat was out of the bag or because section 39 orders can’t be attached to the dead (as I believed, probably erroneously)?
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Was there a reporter in court to challenge the validity of the original order when it was being made?
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It’s amazing when this subject comes up that some magistrates and their ‘learned” clerks have no grasp of the law. But there are also comments here that reflect a similar ignorance.
1. The order was an order (as the editor rightly says), however wrong.
2. A court cannot properly, in law, slap such an order on a dead child.
3. Previous publication of identifying details, including picture, name, school etc., whether in paper or online, has no legal bearing. I have known many instances where a court has issued an order despite all this. Ridiculous, but there you go.
4. The poster here who quoted “freedom of the press” in the face of publication of details on social media has made that bit up. Such a situation might sway an enlightened court, but it has no basis in law.
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Whatever the hows, whys and wherefores, that is a very powerful front page and Patrick and his team should be congratulated on doing an excellent job in unnecessarily difficult circumstances.
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I think DC Media has reached its quota of section 39 breaches in the past year….
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Well done but I do wish all media would avoid this “town in mourning” cliche however well intentioned. It’s usually a few dozen people who know the person well enough to really mourn. Presumptuous of media to assume everyone in mourning, though no doubt they would find such a tragedy very sad.
Good work though.
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Presumably whoever covered the court case for the paper wasn’t aware of the law either – otherwise they would have challenged immediately and not had to resort to calling everyone back to court on another occasion to hear the appeal??
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